Bronze and marble soldiers are being toppled across eastern Europe.
Nationalists are exploiting history as discontent grows. Across eastern Europe, memorials to those who died fighting the Nazis are being dismantled and the far right rehabilitated.
Gyula Hegyi
Wednesday April 11, 2007
The Guardian
Quote:
Across central and eastern Europe, nationalists are exploiting the painful history of the second world war to whip up anti-Russian feeling and rehabilitate the far right as social and economic discontent grows - and the process is mirrored in Russia. The latest in a string of such moves is the decision by the Polish authorities to block the reopening of the permanent Russian exhibition at the site of the Auschwitz death camp because of its description of some of its victims (from annexed pre-war Polish territory) as Soviet citizens. It's difficult to imagine a more sad and cynical debate than one about the citizenship of the massacred millions. Most were of course Jewish, and in the eyes of the Nazis both Poles and Russians were regarded as Untermenschen.
The Polish decision comes after Estonian MPs decided to remove a Soviet war memorial from the centre of Tallinn a few weeks back. The act authorising its removal is the Law on Forbidden Structures Act, a rather Orwellian name for a new cold war against history. The "forbidden structure" in this case is a 2m bronze statue of a Soviet soldier erected in 1947 to commemorate Red Army soldiers killed fighting the Nazis.
Bronze and marble soldiers are being toppled across eastern Europe. The campaign began in 1989-91 with the withdrawal of Soviet troops: Soviet memorials were demolished, Russian-sounding names of streets and squares changed, and red stars from walls cast away. In some countries, the tensions calmed after the turbulent transition period, but in the Baltic republics this anti-historical cold war seems to be a permanent crusade.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...054299,00.html
